Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

100th birthday for noted Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs

Longtime activist Grace Lee Boggs speaks to a crowd gathered for the Environmental Grantmakers Association conference at the Book Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit on Tuesday February 25, 2014. Grace Lee Boggs is one of six women being featured in an upcoming exhibit on Michigan Women in the Civil Rights Movement. Ryan Garza/ Detroit Free Press(Photo: Ryan Garza)

Grace Lee Boggs, a Detroit activist and philosopher known internationally for her work, will turn 100 on Saturday, with a celebration planned Friday for her at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

And on Saturday, her center will take part in a march for peace in Detroit.

For 70 years, Boggs has fought for social change in a wide range of movements that were intertwined with Detroit's history. She was once a Marxist active in labor movements and worked with Malcolm X, but in recent years shifted her beliefs to one that emphasizes more the importance of internal changes.

After her husband, Jimmy Boggs, died in 1993, she founded in 1995 the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in Detroit. A charter school in her name opened a few years ago.

Her 100th birthday is "a milestone," said Kimberley Sherobbi, an activist with the center. "It's very special. You don't usually see a revolutionary and social activist who made it to 100. It's not common."

Boggs, who has gotten weak over the past year, will not be able to attend the party but may watch it on a computer through a live stream, said activists.

Michael Doc Holbrook, a Detroit activist, said Boggs became well known and respected because "she speaks to the hearts of people. She was more or less raised in the Marxist philosophy, but she never got stuck in that. In fact, she made a mild departure from classical Marxism. She believed that as human beings, we should always be in learning mode."

At first Boggs "followed more closely the ideals of Malcolm X as opposed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, but she realized that the tactics of Dr. King and his non-violent resistance was a much more effective tool to use," Holbrook said. Boggs and Jimmy Boggs "are the primary movers and shakers in the Detroit community when it comes to revolutionary ideas, and radical thinking and dialectical thinking."

In the 1960s and 1970s, Boggs and her late husband were active in the movements of black autoworkers; some on the right blamed them for helping instigate the 1967 riot in Detroit.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as crime swept through Detroit, Boggs helped organize rallies against drug dealers, engaging communities to envision a better future. A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Boggs also inspired younger generations of Asian-American activists.

In her writings, Boggs said there was a difference between rebellions and revolutions, the latter being more about changing one's philosophy and worldview. She is a fierce critic of capitalism, blaming it for the decline of cities like Detroit.

"Grace has been very clear: The poverty of Detroit is very much tied to the excess of capital, and that corporate elites have become wealthy at the expense of others," said Shea Howell, a Detroit activist who works with Boggs. She believes that "capitalism is not a good idea."

In recent years, Boggs also criticized rigid Communist beliefs that she said could be dehumanizing. In her 2011 book, "The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-first Century," she drew on the work of Mahatma Gandhi, citing his idea of being the change that you wish to see in the world.

She raised questions about the nature of work itself, and helped encourage community gardening as a way to build sustainable, grassroots communities.

Boggs "has been much more conscious of the need to not only transform the structures of society, but in the process, to transform ourselves," Howell said. "Change yourself to change the world."

The birthday party starts at 6 p.m. Friday at the Charles Wright museum in Detroit. At 10 a.m. Saturday, The Boggs Center will participate in "Silence the Violence March" organized by Church of the Messiah 231 E. Grand Blvd., Detroit.